Water Pipeline Installation Underway

Line will connect 36th Street tank to 46th Street tanks.

By Dan Schroeder

If you’ve looked up at the foothills in the vicinity of 36th Street lately, or hiked in that area, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the new scar just south of Strong’s Canyon. This is the alignment of Ogden City’s long-planned water transmission line between the 36th Street and 46th Street tanks.

The purpose of the new transmission line is to connect the main Ogden City water system, which serves most of the city, to the city’s portion of the Weber Basin culinary water system, which serves the southern end of Ogden. Once it’s completed, the new line will allow the city to move water between the two systems, providing more flexibility in using the two water sources, and some redundancy in case one source or the other is interrupted. This project is being funded by proceeds from the 2008 water and sewer bond.

The pipeline begins at the pump house just below the new 5-million-gallon tank above 36th Street, behind the southeast corner of the golf course. Its route then crosses Strong’s Canyon, turns up-slope, and climbs to the Bonneville shoreline level on property owned by Weber State University. It then turns and follows the Bonneville terrace southward, staying mostly above the old double-track trail. My understanding is that the pipeline will follow Beus Drive and Spring Road through the Beus Hills subdivision. As of two years ago, the preferred route from there dropped down to Skyline Parkway and then south to 46th Street.

Here is an old map, from the city council’s meeting of August 10, 2010, showing the four alignments that were then under consideration (click to enlarge):

At that time the preferred alignment was number 2, shown in green. The new scar seems to be a bit north of this line near Strong’s Canyon and a bit farther east along the Bonneville shoreline.

The photos below were taken Sunday evening, as I hiked along the northern portion of the new scar. The bulldozed area varies from about 25 to 35 feet in width. The city has promised to revegetate the route after the pipeline has been installed, but only with grass and small plants—not trees or shrubs.

In addition to the pipeline, the city had originally hoped to install a new water tank a few hundred feet above the Bonneville shoreline behind WSU. However, City Engineer Justin Anderson informed me last year that the tank proposal had been abandoned, due to the steepness and instability of the slope.